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Twenty-ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Twenty-ninth Amendment (Amendment XXIX) to the United States Constitution established the ranked choice voting of candidates for all federal offices of the United States. The impetus for drafting an amendment to abolish the electoral college arose multiple times in U.S. history, especially following the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency in 2016, despite him having lost the popular vote by close to 3 million votes, the widest margin of any President ever to lose the popular vote and win the electoral college. Some cited the splitting of the vote by third party candidates, much as was the case in prior elections, for distorting the public's true opinions of who should be President. The amendment was proposed by the 120th Congress in 2027 and adopted in 2028 upon being ratified by three-fourths (38) of the state legislatures, first being implemented in the 2028 election. Text Background 'Prior Legislation' Efforts had been made at the local level to establish ranked choice voting as a means of deciding officeholders, however it wasn't until Maine adopted Ranked Choice Voting in 2016 in response to unpopular governor Paul LePage who was elected and re-elected despite majority opposition. After the 2018 midterms 15 other states had adopted ranked choice systems, while others were declaring their support for a national amendment. In 2026, progressive Democratic leaders coordinated with student groups, unions, environmental groups, and other activists to organize a special convention in Philadelphia to draft a series of amendments to the Constitution in 2027. These amendments, after ratification, would eliminate the electoral college and first-past-the-post system that allowed Booker to be reelected to the presidency in 2024, as well as an amendment establishing ranked choice voting nationally and another that finally ended gerrymandering by establishing an algorithmic process for redistricting. 'Opposition' The opposition had initially argued that ranked choice voting is mainly used for "crowd control" and would confuse the system due to growing number of candidates and parties that would result in longer voting periods and result in an increase of voter fraud. For example, as the number of parties grew thanks to the collapse of the Republican and fracturing of the Democrats, more candidates from other parties took to the stage, causing a longer list of candidates to choose from and arrange into preferred order. Throughout the period of the Seventh Party System after the amendment was implemented; there has been many complaints about longer waiting periods to vote, thus decreasing the crucial numbers needed for some candidates to win. However, the increase in voter machines and "heavily regulated" online voting had been able to mostly compensate. Although, that did not stop claims of online voter fraud. Another argument was that candidates who may have won the first choice, may lose against second and third choice candidates being transferred to their opposition and thus the somewhat more popular candidate would narrowly lose the election by what some calls a "super-minority". Many people would also call out "lazy-voting", where people choose their prefered candidate(s) as amongst the first choices before randomly ranking candidates that they do not prefer among the bottom choices that they do not want. This causes some to earn more votes than they should have. This became apparent in the 2056 Presidential Election when Conservative candidate Brandon Tran received more votes in the 'first ballot' but ultimately lost the Election to Progressive candidate Dan Forest. Category:Amendments to the United States Constitution